what a dystopian article and idea. Homeowners should be prevented from sending Ring video footage to police because there is a <i>risk</i> that these videos might be used to report innocent racial minorities to the police. The presence of this <i>risk</i> apparently outweighs the obvious benefit that one can send videos of real criminals to police. What's next, not being able to call 911?<p>Criminals are victimizers, not victims. It is UNETHICAL to coerce people into not reporting a crime because of perceived identity-politics based risks. It causes increased harm in the world because criminals who escape are free to victimize again, and do. The authors of this article, and editors at Wired, are participating in unethical, immoral behavior and they should be ashamed of themselves!
If your issue with surveillance camera footage is that it increases the possibility of racial profiling, guess what? You don’t have a problem with Ring, you have a problem with policing.<p>It’s interesting that the article goes on to include an affiliate link listicle with many other doorbell cameras. I wonder how those other cameras managed to disable the possibility of racial profiling.
Am I an idiot? I genuinely don't understand the chain of logic in this article, and I'm not being deliberately obtuse here. You shouldn't have the ability to proactively provide data to law enforcement to report possible crime, and the seemingly unconnected reasoning is racism. I'm honestly puzzled by this article, it feels incomplete.
> Why We Don’t Recommend Ring Cameras<p>> They’re affordable and ubiquitous, but homeowners shouldn’t be able to act as vigilantes.<p>> Ring owners [are allowed] to send videos they've captured with their Ring video doorbell cameras and outdoor security cameras to law enforcement.<p>Let's think about this one moment. A "security" camera provides security against what exactly? By definition, crime. Crime is handled by whom? Police.<p>And now homeowners are somehow labelled as "vigilantes" because they can send footage (presumably of crime) to the authorities? How does that even make sense? By definition, vigilantism is law enforcement undertaken without legal authority -- and the police are the very authorities tasked with law enforcement.<p>Labeling homeowners "vigilantes" along this line of thought is a very obvious oxymoron.<p>It is ridiculously absurd that any amount of circumstances should be used as a justification for an attack on such a feature. This Wired staff editor was so determined to write about police reform and social biases that they make an illogical argument that has nothing to do with the Ring cameras themselves.<p>I am not defending Ring, but rather pointing out that this article is both illogical and mistitled. It has nothing to do with Ring specifically and cites no evidence to suggest that the ability to send videos to police -- presumably, crime footage -- increases the likelihood of racial profiling.<p>An argument like this is analogous to an article titled "Why We Don't Recommend iPhones" where the author writes something along the lines of:<p>They're premium and ubiquitous, but people shouldn't be able to call 911... When you set up an iPhone, you're automatically enrolled into cellular service... But it also allows iPhone owners to call 911... We believe this feature should not exist. When we interviewed Apple CEO Tim Cook on steps that his company was doing to reduce racial profiling... et cetera.<p>This is absurd.
Shouldn't this be up to the owner of the camera? I don't see any reason why you wouldn't want to report certain activity to police. Let's say a series of cameras in a neighborhood caught a man looking into windows. And the last camera caught the same man breaking into a residence. Would not the other videos help put a criminal in jail? And that's bad? How? The writer at wired doesn't own a home, lives with their parents, or never had someone try to victimize them where they lay their head. Theirs is a naive look at the world though an ideological lense. Something that doesn't exist in the real world, and a view that gets real people hurt precisely because it enables criminal behavior. If we, as a society, tolerated crime less, then we'd have less of it.
Frontline has a great mini-documentary calling out the very real privacy and trust violations Amazon faces today: <a href="https://youtu.be/RVVfJVj5z8s" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://youtu.be/RVVfJVj5z8s</a>.<p>- Ring allowing data access to all employees, and to police, without customer awareness. Amazon also created a special interface for police to access Ring footage, at will, in exchange for police departments pushing Ring devices (<a href="https://youtu.be/RVVfJVj5z8s?t=4702" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://youtu.be/RVVfJVj5z8s?t=4702</a>).<p>- Alexa as listening devices in very personal and private places, for which Amazon employees can listen and view "for training purposes." Dave Limp is on record explicitly stating this is <i>false</i>; "it's not a listening device."
(<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVVfJVj5z8s&t=4490s">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVVfJVj5z8s&t=4490s</a>) And then ambient intelligence rolls out, right after this interview, where Alexa doesn't actually need a wake word to "hear" requests. See also: Ambient, Proactive Alexa (<a href="https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/devices/amazons-new-head-of-alexa-rohit-prasad" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/devices/amazons-new-head-of...</a>). Make no mistake, Alexa is always listening.<p>- Dave Limp also skirts accountability for the "cute indoor Ring device" that was hacked and scared a child to her very core, stating it is an "industry problem" (<a href="https://youtu.be/RVVfJVj5z8s?t=4783" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://youtu.be/RVVfJVj5z8s?t=4783</a>).<p>Notice how Dave Limp's eyes dart both in the "Alexa is not a listening device" and in the "we've already investigated that [the Ring hack] to make sure what the root cause was," along with the lip bite in the "Alexa is not a listening device" clip. Following the question on Alexa and Ring contributing to a dystopian Orwellian reality, notice the swallow after Limp states that "he doesn't want to invent the technology that would create that world." And then the dismissal statement of "that world happened before Ring or Alexa."<p>Watching people lie is fun.<p>- Amazon Rekognition (<a href="https://youtu.be/RVVfJVj5z8s?t=5002" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://youtu.be/RVVfJVj5z8s?t=5002</a>) uses Ring data as training data. And then markets that to law enforcement.<p>Andy Jassy himself states "with any technology, the people that use the technology have to be responsible for it, and if they use it irresponsibly they have to be held accountable" (<a href="https://youtu.be/RVVfJVj5z8s?t=5147" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://youtu.be/RVVfJVj5z8s?t=5147</a>).
Ironically this convinced me to buy a Ring camera.<p>"You might pattern match on the people who steal your shit" ok? Then I'd be able to report people who steal my shit?<p>Is this a joke? Am I missing something?